I stayed up until midnight to finish the last 250 pages. I was just hooked and couldn't put the book down.

I've wanted toread the Gormenghast trilogy since I saw the 6 hour (?)miniseries a couple of years ago. The miniseries had the feel ofa movie made from a book (or books) in the same way that theHarry Potter movies do. It seemed that a lot of details were beingleft out to keep the pacing good on the assumption that peopleinterested in watching had read the book(s) and could fill in thedetails from memory.

I'm pleasantly surprised at how good the book is. The focus ison how strange and stilted culture can become when it is nolonger allowed to progress. So much of the plot is centeredaround the description of the decaying castle.

There's a scene where the library is torched. The library hadbeen the one place where the 76th Earl of Gormenghast felt atall at home and was at all human. I think any avid bookcrosserwould find meaning in this short passage.

Then there is the title character. Poor little Titus! I really feel sorryfor him in this first book. One comment though about Titus. By the end of the book he's just over a year old but he isn't depicted well. Perhaps the lack of love in his early life stunted him or perhaps the stilted dialogue style of the book is the reason for Titus remaining mum. ( )

Dost thou love picking meat? Or would'st thou see A man in the clouds, and have him speak to thee? BUNYAN

Dedication

First words

Gormenghast, that is, the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous quality were it possible to have ignored the circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed like an epidemic around its outer walls.

Swelter's eyes meet those of his enemy, and never was there held between four globes of gristle so sinister a hell of hatred. Had the flesh, the fibres, and the bones of the chef and those of Mr. Flay been conjured away and away down that dark corridor, leaving only their four eyes suspended in mid-air outside the Earl's door, then, surely, they must have reddened to the hue of Mars, reddened and smouldered, and at last broken into flame, so intense was their hatred - broken into flame and and circled about one another in ever-narrowing gyres and in swifter and yet swifter flight until, merged into one sizzling globe of ire they must have surely fled, the four in one, leaving a trail of blood behind them in the cold grey air of the corridor, until, screaming as they fly beneath innumerable arches and down endless passageways of Gormenghast, they found their eyeless bodies once again, and re-entrenched themselves in startled sockets.

Last words

And there shall be a flame-green daybreak soon. And love itself will cry for insurrection! For tomorrow is also a day -- and Titus has entered his stronghold.

Titus Groan, heir to Lord Sepulchrave, has just been born. His world will be predetermined by complex rituals, the origins of which are lost in time; it will be peopled by the dark characters who inhabit the half-lit corridors.